Americans in Space A Novel [Hardcover]

Life is a challenge for 36-year-old Kate Cavanaugh, high school guidance counselor to a motley group of at-risk students. Two years after finding her young husband dead in bed beside her, Kate's storybook life has vanished, and she and her two children are still reeling. Her daughter Charlotte, once a sweet girl, has morphed into an angry, tattooed, tongue-studded teen; and Hunter, Kate's four-year-old, keeps his feelings sealed tight inside and an empty ketchup bottle clasped to his heart. When a tragedy occurs at the Alan B. Shepard High School, it's Kate who finds herself in need of counsel and guidance. What she does next catapults her and her family down an unfamiliar road, on a trajectory into spacetoward understanding, forgiveness and healing.

Mary E. Mitchell is author of the novelStarting Out Sideways.A writer of fiction, non-fiction and essays, she has published her work inThe New York Times,The Boston Globe,The Boston Herald,The Minnesota Star Tribune,Contrary Magazine,The Writing Self,Family Circle,First for Women, and online atKaplancollege.com. She is a recipient of the New England PEN Discovery Award for her novel,The Nearness of You. For years she has taught writing at the Joan Brack Adult Learning Center and Bethany Hill School, a living and learning community, both in Framingham, Massachusetts. She lives with her husband in Massachusetts.

Mitchell (Starting Out Sideways, 2007) arrestingly depicts a family consumed by grief.
Two years after the sudden death of her husband from an undiagnosed heart condition, Kate Cavanaughs family is virtually unrecognizable. Her daughter, Charlotte, has morphed into a sullen, tattooed teenager. Her four-year-old son Hunter, the books most affecting and lovable character, quietly toddles around clutching a ketchup bottle to his chest. The only person keeping the Cavanaughs functioning, it often seems, is their neighbl“7